[opendtv] News: Birds Get to Keep Sticks

Birds Get to Keep Sticks

By John Eggerton & Bill McConnell -- Broadcasting & Cable, 4/28/2004 
12:16:00 PM

The House Telecommunications Subcommittee Wednesday reauthorized the 
bill that gives satellite companies the right to carry local 
broadcast stations, requiring them to carry all stations in any 
market where they carry any.

  The Satellite Home Viewer Enhancement and Reauthorization Act does 
not give satellite companies the ability to deliver distant digital 
signals to customers not yet able to get a digital signal, a change 
that EchoStar and some others had pushed for, but it does direct the 
FCC to study the issue of so-called digital white areas and report to 
Congress by the end of 2005.

Unlike the former law, the reauthorized bill prevents satellite 
companies from putting some TV stations on a second dish, which 
smaller broadcasters saw as a way to marginalize them. There can 
still be two dishes, but all the broadcasters must be on one of them.

An amendment that would have imposed a la carte obligations on 
satellite and cable was withdrawn, but could be reintroduced at the 
full-committee markup in two weeks, though Subcommittee Chairman 
Fred Upton (R-Mich.) afterwards indicated he was leaning toward 
keeping it out of the bill. "Im not sure it's germane," he said. It 
would also definitely be controversial, likely enough so to bog down 
the bill, and others want more hearings on the subject anyway.

  Some lawmakers see requiring cable and satellite operators to give 
subscribers the ability to pick and choose the channels they want as 
way to respond to public concerns about controling indecent content 
into the home, as well as a way to hold down cable prices.

"We are particularly pleased the Subcommittee moved decisively to end 
EchoStar's two-dish practice and rejected an ill-guided proposal to 
allow distant digital signal importation, "NAB President Eddie Fritts 
said in a statement.

"NAB and our local television station members will continue working 
closely with Members of both the House and Senate as this bill moves 
through the legislative process."

  Judiciary will look at its version of the bill next Thursday (there 
is split jurisdiction, since it involves changes to both the 
Copyright Act and the Communications Act), then the two versions will 
be combined into one bill before it goes to the floor. Senate 
Commerce has a hearing next Tuesday on its simple one-line 
reauthorization of the existing bill.
 
 
----------------------------------------------------------------------
You can UNSUBSCRIBE from the OpenDTV list in two ways:

- Using the UNSUBSCRIBE command in your user configuration settings at 
FreeLists.org 

- By sending a message to: opendtv-request@xxxxxxxxxxxxx with the word 
unsubscribe in the subject line.

Other related posts: